AD Sullivan journal 2013

    (I’m not sure which of these two analysis pieces I wrote first, although they are dated a day apart, so I’m posting both – each has a slightly different perspective on the poem).   The inevitable happened, if her latest poem can be believed and if the sequence of poems written about her involvement with a married man are being played out here in this last chapter. In her previous poems, she held out high hopes. But heart break, resentment, missed opportunity apparently failed to make it more than just a temporary fling (as she hoped to avoid in an early poem). The poem is particularly painful to read because over the last two weeks, this was easy to see coming, a train rushing towards her in a dark tunnel with her having no where to run after having made her way into that tunnel in the first place. She opens with the heart break and how it was not the fact that her heart had become “too, too full” from being deprived for “too, too long.” Instead, it wa...

  Her poems come in spurts, either one posted over a long dry period or a bunch in a sudden surge. So, the sparsity of poems over the last month has been replaced by three or four poems posted in rapid succession, and last night, two, and then her sending me an official press release this morning – perhaps needing to bury herself in work to overcome the emotional trauma the latest poem suggests. To whom the poem is written for will remain a mystery. But it is clear she panicked when she found herself consumed by this person after a long time doing without real love in her life, and she arrived in his world at a time when that world began to crumble with her in it. She claims she feared she would contribute more to its deterioration if she remained in it. But the poem is also about her struggle to continue as an individual, apparently panicking at the possibility of losing herself in a relationship with him. There is selfishness on both sides. His reaction apparently to th...

   (This is from one of my alternative journals. This journal is about the antics in my office, part of a history of the place I want to eventually compile. But I’m posting it so to get a feeling of the insane backdrop against which everything took place).   A whole year later after the smoke has cleared, the ugly truth emerges as to what exactly happened to the long-time boss of the auxiliary office, and how the system we exist under works – or perhaps more accurately, doesn’t work. “E” who eventually replaced her eventually backstabbed the old lady copy editor, causing the owner to fire the woman, and resulting in more work being dumped on the shoulders of the other worker – without, of course, any additional pay. I can’t say exactly when “E” started to aspire for a higher position, but she clearly learned quickly how things work around here, everybody stabbing everybody that poses a threat to their aspirations. “E,” at first, apparently aspired to get my jo...

    There are so many odd coincidences lately, I don’t know what to think, such as the posting of the photos   from the gas line installation in the town I cover, the sudden appearance of her art at a time when I started posting mine, and then last night, I thought I actually saw her on the street when I was covering an event, but only got a glimpse of the figure, who had the same build, seemed to dress the same, only to learn later the Joey D, with whom she works, also has ties in my town. I was too far away to be sure it was her, although this woman – whomever she was – kept looking in my direction as if concerned about me. Then, this person crossed in the middle of the street rather than at the cross walk, as it trying to avoid me – odd behavior, I thought. Yet as odd as it seems, I saw no reason for her to be down there, so, I am assuming this is just one more coincidence, someone who looks and acts like her, but it not her, and has nothing to do with anything...

   The poem she posted today is among the most tender love poems I have seen her post to-date, more evidence suggesting she is indeed in love. As in many of the poems I have seen so far, this poem expresses her duality, the person she is inside, and the person she projects to the outside world. She lives inside her head, building a barrier to the outside world – as indicated in previous poems – to keep her real self safe. In this poem, she comes to realize that insider herself living has become a big part of her life and didn’t realize that there was any other way of living, except living to survive, until he sat down beside her. The poem’s setting is most likely her apartment with its series of windows along the southern side, first on her coach, and then her bed with an afternoon sunlight pouring over them as they make love. This poem is clearly directed at someone in particular, someone in whom she has confided perhaps some of her deepest secrets, someone who ha...

   Written mid-March 2013   One thing evident from many of her poems and almost all of her songs is a common and painful theme. Actor and director Clint Eastwood in his masterpiece, “The Unforgiven” had a theme defined by its title in which nearly all of the characters are unable to find forgiveness – they can’t even forgive themselves. In her work, the theme – or the title of a movie that might be made from her songs and poems would be “The Unrequited” since she apparently continues to give love that is rarely or at best only briefly returned. This is particularly evident in a very short song where she is pinning over someone who is clearly unresponsive, and still she holds out hope he will come back to lay with her once he has grown weary of his wandering ways. As pointed out, this is a remarkably short song, and the song does not fit the mold of an ordinary lyric.   Instead, she seems to be singing a non-riming poem against a background of piano an...

    She feels empowered. She even wears the bracelet that says she is, suddenly inspired, marking up her success in the fact that she could bring people together under that feminist banner, a remarkable achievement, coming at an important time when she needs to rebuilt confidence in herself and get back on the treadmill to success. Only… Where does she go from here? In the past, she was always successful in moving up the ranks in small groups, where there is a specific line of power she could trickle up, starting out in the trenches to make her way up each prong of the ladder until she has a position of power. But in this move to empower herself, she has gone outside the usual lines, developing a base of power that is not following any chain of command. It is an impressive achievement, yet how does she broker it into the next step? For all of her talent, she strikes me as somewhat naïve, leaping onto bandwagons, a true believer in this cause or that, adopting...

      You have to wonder about her poetry and what it actually means, and how they are shaped with craft enough to be taken on a number of levels with multiple meanings, sometimes including odd bits such as that schizophrenia poem a few months ago that seems to take a cheap shot at me, or even those poems over the summer couched in apparent kindness – such as the quicksand poem, when perhaps they aren’t kind at all. Some of her poems barely control her rage, although most poems struggle not to reveal the near despair she clearly sometimes feels. At the same time, it is easy to read things into her poems that might not be there, or perhaps she did not intend, the unconscious revelations all writers display unintentionally, aspects of the creative process we must rely on, but sometimes can betray our honest feelings, when we never intended to. It is dangerous, however, to look for clues in her poems or to presume messages that are not there, such as might be the cas...